Book lust
kai_z knows exactly what I'm talking about. She was there to witness my speechlessness and wide-eyes of lust and longing as this evening my tute group was given a special tour of the hidden, locked off areas of the uni library. The part where they keep the special collections and rare books.
Oh. My. God.
Oh. Your. God.
The OMGness of it is just... incredible! I... just....
The first book we were shown was a sampler collection of cloth - cloth that had been collected by Captain Cook and/or his crew on three of their voyages to the South Seas and then bound into books. So precious and fragile....
I didn't touch that book. But in the Rare Books room I did get to hold and look through a 14th or 15th century prayer book thing. A tiny little book. No. Not a book. It wasn't printed. It was hand-written. With illuminated letters. A medieval manuscript (please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm so blown away I barely remember the details. It's partly why I'm blogging this - to do my best to remember it all.) It was so dense. So beautiful. So tiny. The pages looked like this though with less goldleaf.
Everywhere you looked in that room, there was something else to stun you. Like John Gould's Birds of Australia. A facsimile of the Gutenberg Bible. (They don't have the real one. Possibly because the last time a real one was for sale was 1978. And cost $2.2 million then) But they did have a book (actually it's an incunabulum) printed by the guy who basically put Gutenberg out of business. (kai_z please tell me if I've gotten anything wrong here, and I'll correct it) It was beautiful. Printed on the most beautiful quality paper. It felt gorgeous. I know this because they let me touch it. Stroke it.
Oh! And there were 'books' printed on papyrus. The most exciting thing about them was that the writing was Javanese! Seriously. I recognised it.... eventually. After I'd spent about 10 minutes trying to read it upside-down.
Another book in that room was about 400 years old - and was a book on the History of the World, with the most incredible woodcuts of the world as it was known back in the 1500s. And, and... on the shelf.. a first edition of the Origin of Species. In its original binding. There was another book - the progenitor of the 'pocket book', bound in vellum. Yet another book printed by the guy who created italic type. That book smelt beautiful. Old and musty and redolent of hundreds of years of libraries and books and papers.
So, after I died and went to heaven in that room, we went to the BX room, I think. I got sidetracked by a beautifully bound three book set of Dante's Divine Comedy.
I don't even remember the name of the third room we went into. But everywhere I looked, there was something I loved. I don't want eternal youth and a bevy of virgins when I go to meet my heavenly reward. I want eternal life spent in that room. A lot of it was devoted to collections of books that had been donated to the University. Such as the McLaren Collection. Lots of Australiana... so I got sidetracked by an edition of Remembering Babylon... until I remembered that I wanted to fondle first editions of Seven Little Australians. But on my way down to 'T' (for Turner) I saw a collection of men's magazines from the 1940s, 1950s. Above them - a huge collection of pulp fiction novels. I pulled out the first one on the shelf to show the others its utterly HILARIOUS title... but the one behind it was funnier. And the one behind that one was even funnier. I could have died laughing going through that shelf. There's a PDF list for download. 68 pages of the most pants-wettingly funny book titles you could ever hope to see.
Here's a sample:
Best of Bumper Sex
Illegal Husband
Jet-Set Jezebel
Motel Man-Trap
He Made Me Join a Wife Swap Club
The Dame Busters
Unholy Angels of Death
Homicide Hussy
Hell is my Destination
Lady on the Lam
The Willis Collection looks fascinating as well. We (well I at least) didn't have a chance to peruse long there. Mostly because the first book I pulled off the shelf in that section was one entitled Bestiality and Necrophilia. And there, emblazoned on the front cover was the word 'Illustrated'. Think.... have you thought? Are you laughing?
Then we went past a bunch of shelves to another spot where... oh god.... bound editions of Farrago. Dated back to 1928. !! !! !! !! I pulled it off the shelf, and started leafing through. Based on that brief glance, I've got to say that not a lot seems to have changed in the last 80 years. There was an article from April 1928 saying that stories of student behaviour had been reported irresponsibly by the media at large - that in fact there were NO students rioting at a particular student theatre event and they hadn't been forcibly evicted, that in fact they were just in high spirits at the time.
I think it was that edition that had a headline in the centre of the page saying something like 'We're not snobs'. For an ex Monash undergrad like me, that was hilarious.
Then we had to leave. I could have cried.
In all truth and honesty - those rooms are incredible. And since I've been searching for links, I've discovered that they also contain other collections that I would love to fondle. Like the Communist Party of Australia collection.
But, you know what? I can't believe this. I can place a request for a book from the Special Collection, and then go to a special reading room where I will be allowed to read it. And ask for photocopies from it. They will let me handle these priceless irreplacable covetous gorgeous awe-inspiring tomes. I feel as if all the riches of the world have been laid before me - I don't even know where to start. Apparently it doesn't even need to be for research purposes.... I can do it all just for the love of the book.
Oh. My. God.
Oh. Your. God.
The OMGness of it is just... incredible! I... just....
The first book we were shown was a sampler collection of cloth - cloth that had been collected by Captain Cook and/or his crew on three of their voyages to the South Seas and then bound into books. So precious and fragile....
I didn't touch that book. But in the Rare Books room I did get to hold and look through a 14th or 15th century prayer book thing. A tiny little book. No. Not a book. It wasn't printed. It was hand-written. With illuminated letters. A medieval manuscript (please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm so blown away I barely remember the details. It's partly why I'm blogging this - to do my best to remember it all.) It was so dense. So beautiful. So tiny. The pages looked like this though with less goldleaf.
Everywhere you looked in that room, there was something else to stun you. Like John Gould's Birds of Australia. A facsimile of the Gutenberg Bible. (They don't have the real one. Possibly because the last time a real one was for sale was 1978. And cost $2.2 million then) But they did have a book (actually it's an incunabulum) printed by the guy who basically put Gutenberg out of business. (kai_z please tell me if I've gotten anything wrong here, and I'll correct it) It was beautiful. Printed on the most beautiful quality paper. It felt gorgeous. I know this because they let me touch it. Stroke it.
Oh! And there were 'books' printed on papyrus. The most exciting thing about them was that the writing was Javanese! Seriously. I recognised it.... eventually. After I'd spent about 10 minutes trying to read it upside-down.
Another book in that room was about 400 years old - and was a book on the History of the World, with the most incredible woodcuts of the world as it was known back in the 1500s. And, and... on the shelf.. a first edition of the Origin of Species. In its original binding. There was another book - the progenitor of the 'pocket book', bound in vellum. Yet another book printed by the guy who created italic type. That book smelt beautiful. Old and musty and redolent of hundreds of years of libraries and books and papers.
So, after I died and went to heaven in that room, we went to the BX room, I think. I got sidetracked by a beautifully bound three book set of Dante's Divine Comedy.
I don't even remember the name of the third room we went into. But everywhere I looked, there was something I loved. I don't want eternal youth and a bevy of virgins when I go to meet my heavenly reward. I want eternal life spent in that room. A lot of it was devoted to collections of books that had been donated to the University. Such as the McLaren Collection. Lots of Australiana... so I got sidetracked by an edition of Remembering Babylon... until I remembered that I wanted to fondle first editions of Seven Little Australians. But on my way down to 'T' (for Turner) I saw a collection of men's magazines from the 1940s, 1950s. Above them - a huge collection of pulp fiction novels. I pulled out the first one on the shelf to show the others its utterly HILARIOUS title... but the one behind it was funnier. And the one behind that one was even funnier. I could have died laughing going through that shelf. There's a PDF list for download. 68 pages of the most pants-wettingly funny book titles you could ever hope to see.
Here's a sample:
Best of Bumper Sex
Illegal Husband
Jet-Set Jezebel
Motel Man-Trap
He Made Me Join a Wife Swap Club
The Dame Busters
Unholy Angels of Death
Homicide Hussy
Hell is my Destination
Lady on the Lam
The Willis Collection looks fascinating as well. We (well I at least) didn't have a chance to peruse long there. Mostly because the first book I pulled off the shelf in that section was one entitled Bestiality and Necrophilia. And there, emblazoned on the front cover was the word 'Illustrated'. Think.... have you thought? Are you laughing?
Then we went past a bunch of shelves to another spot where... oh god.... bound editions of Farrago. Dated back to 1928. !! !! !! !! I pulled it off the shelf, and started leafing through. Based on that brief glance, I've got to say that not a lot seems to have changed in the last 80 years. There was an article from April 1928 saying that stories of student behaviour had been reported irresponsibly by the media at large - that in fact there were NO students rioting at a particular student theatre event and they hadn't been forcibly evicted, that in fact they were just in high spirits at the time.
I think it was that edition that had a headline in the centre of the page saying something like 'We're not snobs'. For an ex Monash undergrad like me, that was hilarious.
Then we had to leave. I could have cried.
In all truth and honesty - those rooms are incredible. And since I've been searching for links, I've discovered that they also contain other collections that I would love to fondle. Like the Communist Party of Australia collection.
But, you know what? I can't believe this. I can place a request for a book from the Special Collection, and then go to a special reading room where I will be allowed to read it. And ask for photocopies from it. They will let me handle these priceless irreplacable covetous gorgeous awe-inspiring tomes. I feel as if all the riches of the world have been laid before me - I don't even know where to start. Apparently it doesn't even need to be for research purposes.... I can do it all just for the love of the book.